Thursday, November 15, 2007

Times have changed and in these times, I don’t read at all. It’s been an year or so since I last read a book.

But still there are temptations I succumb badly and sometimes embarrassingly to. For example, anyone reading anything around me, I just have to know what it is :)For those who knew me in my passionate days would know that is a small left-over from an addiction that mesmerized me for years though has left me now, but still with cravings. Anyway, on my flight back home, saw a woman reading 'The Inheritance of Loss', and I, again quite stupidly sneaked around her until I found the name of the book. And during a boring shopping day with elder sister in main market, I walked into a bookshop for second hand books, while she was fighting with the tailor, and found that for 75 RS.I haven't read it; I am not even keen on reading it.But it starts with a passage of Borges, a passage I hadn't read before.How bad can it be when Kiran Desai has read Borges?I am not sure when would I read it, maybe I won't. But I know, even if it’s as bad as her mother's, I won't be hating it.

Here's Borges' Boast of Quietness

'Writings of light assault the darkness, more prodigious than meteors.The tall unknowable city takes over the countryside.Sure of my life and death, I observe the ambitious and would like to understand them.Their day is greedy as a lariat in the air.Their night is a rest from the rage within steel, quick to attack.They speak of humanity.My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of that same poverty.They speak of homeland.My homeland is the rhythm of a guitar, a few portraits, an old sword,the willow grove’s visible prayer as evening falls.Time is living me.More silent than my shadow, I pass through the loftily covetous multitude.They are indispensable, singular, worthy of tomorrow.My name is someone and anyone.I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn’t expect to arrive'